Little Girl Dreams
by planet p
Summary: Little Miss Parker’s thoughts on the subject of love.


**Little Girl Dreams**

by planet p

**Disclaimer:** 'The Pretender' does not belong to me, nor do its characters; I just like to lend them to torture them for a bit, I _always_ give them back intact…

Harsh breathing caught in the stuffy air. The little girl paused in her tottering, listening hard, twisting her hands about squirmily as she held one tightly in the other's grasp.

She could hear the breathing pause, hitch, and froze, as though discovered. But she had not been. After a moment and a slow moan, the breathing continued, with greater urgency than before.

A small smile played across her lips as she realised there were voices, voices that she knew, voices that comforted her nights when she was afraid of the dark or the scary things hiding in the shadows, just out of sight.

Her tiny feet padded softly on the floor, almost silent, as she rounded the corner.

"Mmm…" Desperate gasping reached the little girl's ear, demanding, ravaged, breathless. "Mmmmmm…" Higher now, sweet in its own strange way, sated.

The little girl's smile got wider, her shuffling shier. She blinked slowly against the gloom pressing in on her from all sides, the smell of dust and old reaching her, lulling her.

Her mummy gave another moan, burying her head soft against Sydney's neck. Cathy was sitting on the desk, back to the door, papers and various other items scattered all about the table and floor. She wasn't working. She wasn't even wearing much of anything.

The little girl noted the broken mug, shattered against the hard relentless wall, coffee spilt out over the carpet soggily.

Her mummy could get like this sometimes. Angry. Then she would bust things, throw things, hit things, make things hurt.

That was why it was dark, the light was broken, smashed savagely by the power of her mind.

She always pretended like she didn't want his help, tried to make him stay away, hurt him with her mind, dredging up long forgotten memories of those he had lost, of how he had been tortured, making him sick in his stomach, a terrible aching buzz that never left his head.

She didn't want his help, but she accepted his comfort, however savagely or bitterly.

xxx

Daddy wasn't the same. Daddy didn't care. Mummy hurt herself because it was hurting so bad inside. Daddy hurt her too sometimes. Tied her to the bed. Hit her. Stuck things in her mouth because he didn't want to hear her worthless mumblings.

The kitchen knife was always nice, sharp and precise, cold and filled with anticipation. The cheese knife was better, jagged and sawing, it hurt something awful.

Sydney always made her promise: "Don't do it again! Please don't do it again!" She just ignored those words, ignored his pleas, exerted her anger at his caring in ways that ensured savage pleasure, in ways that wrenched the breath out of his lungs and made him dizzy, made him forget her end of the promise. She never did promise. She never could promise.

The little girl liked Sydney better. He tried to help mummy. He didn't care that she hurt him, she was hurting worse.

xxx

Miss Parker awoke in blackness. She had been shaking and cold tears stung like ice on her skin as they slid down her cheeks, blurring her world at odd moments.

The young woman offered a muffled sniff and sat up, holding her head for the terrible ache it now harboured.

xxx

Later she made herself a coffee and added a generous amount of vodka.

xxx

He still missed her, she could see as much in his sweet brown eyes, so desolate of hope and warmth at times.

He wanted to help her too. Daddy didn't care for her feelings. He didn't even know she had feelings. What use were feelings to a Parker? What use were feelings to a cold, ruthless huntress?

She was like ice, ice that tore and stabbed, ice that never melted, ice that screamed in silence. She never let it show.

But he knew. He cared.

It hurt him that she could have been her mother, looked a carbon copy. It hurt him but it never stopped him from wanting to help, made him even more stubborn.

She doubted that he knew she knew. She never asked, never spoke of it. He kept a poetry book her mother had given him for his birthday, kept it hidden away where the Centre couldn't hurt it, the same place he kept his heart, vaulted and padlocked, some place where the memory of her love would keep him warm stormy nights.

She had written the poems by hand, poems about ordinary things, poems about her love of ordinary things, poems about so many things. When he got lonely he would always read one of her poems. He always found those poems were each like a tear drop in a sea of heartache, each told a little more about her, about how she was slowly dying inside, about how she desperately wanted for out, wanted not to be cold and stiff and mechanical inside, but the pain was digging, always digging, never resting, never letting her rest.

xxx

Miss Parker sighed. She didn't need to read those poems to know the words, she felt them each day. She had loved once too. When she had still been young and foolish. Now she just pretended to love, forced herself to believe what she pretended was real but knew was not. And she had started to believe.

He never pretended, never had, it just wasn't him. She had always known this about him, ever since he was a little boy. He never pretended to feel things he did not, to will away things that hurt him and wish on things that were not true.

He could pretend – God, could he pretend, sometimes it made her so angry – but his love was never pretend.

Sometimes she wondered how he had learnt love, who he had perceived it in first. Love was like that, it could speak volumes when it was dying.

His love would never die, but his heart was another story. One day it would just stop caring, shut up shop, and his love would have nowhere to go, would have to sit out in the cold and wait to die, bit by bit, a little more fading with each passing day, each fading sunset.

She hated him. She hated him like the Plague. But she never didn't love him. She loved him because he loved her, and that was only fair.

No matter what else she was, she tried to be fair, knew how unfairness could destroy a soul, how it had destroyed hers.

xxx

He would ring soon, he always did. Sometimes she would have been sleeping. Sometimes she pretended.

She was always so harsh. She wasn't cold and sterily brutal. She was viscous. She was cruel. She was horrid. She never could be cold with him. She could either love him or hate him.

Inside she was dying, in fact of matter dead, but he kept some small part of her alive, her knowing that he cared enough to call in the middle of the night when it would really piss her off.

She spoke like she hated him. She wanted him to get out whilst she still kept the ship afloat, leave her to sink to the bottom, a captain goes down with her ship. He knew she only hated him because she couldn't love him. She hated him for knowing.

Her heart had barred its doors to her, refusing to let her destroy its last semblance of love, of care. Her heart fought her with all of its might. It gave her anger to replace the love it was keeping from her destructive hands, anything that was not death and loneliness, anything that raged and screamed, anything that felt.

xxx

She was annoyed now. Damned labrat was making her wait! She glared at the phone lying coldly on her glass coffee table. _Damn him to Hell! I'll meet him at the gate, offer him a discount for the tour._

A small smile lit her perfectly painted lips. She pretended not to notice.

... the end ...


End file.
